Though EA will deny sort of relationship or special deal with Microsoft, there’s no denying that the Xbox holds a special place for the publisher’s different studios. PopCap Games producer Brian Lindley recently spoke to OXM about the initial development process and how the game’s migration to the Xbox One, where it is a timed exclusive, felt natural.

“It was kind of interesting. We have a lot of experience with the Xbox platforms, and our primary development platforms at first were the Xbox 360 and PC. And I think as EA’s relationship with Microsoft has grown and improved, it was just a natural migration for us to go from PC and Xbox 360 to Xbox One. And it’s a great piece of hardware, it’s given us the opportunity to make the game look incredible, run at a great frame rate and just visually be really impressive.”

Did Garden Warfare initially start life on other platforms? According to Lindley, “It didn’t really come about that way. We’d always envisaged ourselves as a very focused game, and I think the relationship with Microsoft just made it a convenient place to start. Additionally, we’re kind of a small team. We’re not really staffed to just launch on five or six platforms at once, so we really needed to focus on a couple of platforms to start with, and then the relationship with Microsoft has made those choices easier for us.”

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare will release on February 18th 2014 in North America and February 20th 2014 in Europe for Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC.